Dear Father
by Smidgie
Summary: A letter to our favourite cannibal from someone he left behind... Post Hannibal the book, but can read for the film as well. Please review.


Yet another of those Lecter's daughter fics, but hopefully individual in it's own way. I just had trouble seeing Lecter's daughter as sweet, innocent, and reaching puberty and over without any idea her dad was a serial killer and cannibal. Post _Hannibal_ the book, but can be interpreted as _Hannibal_ the film if you deviate from canon and have Lecter and Starling hook up at the end. Reads better taking the ending of the book into account, though.

_Red Dragon_, _Silence of the Lambs_, _Hannibal_, etc. and all related characters and plots belong to Thomas Harris. They're just my puppets for a time. I won't rough 'em up too much. All I own is Maire, and her delightful nature, if I do say so myself.

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Dear Father,

I know you don't remember me, or at least you haven't contacted me in years. Although I admit it used to hurt, I don't really care anymore. There are only so many times a heart can break.

I have been watching the course of your second incarceration with something like morbid fascination, since I was a child the first time round. Your wife is lovely – I cannot imagine how someone like you ended up with someone like her. An FBI agent? Father, you really are slipping. Did you really imagine she would stay faithful to you? Did you really believe she wouldn't wake up one day, see you lying next to her, and clap the cuffs on your ass so quickly you wouldn't even know what hit you? Did you _love_ her, Hannibal Lecter? Did you love her like you loved Mother, before you left us to run your highly successful psychiatric practise before I was even born? Father, Father, Father. I really am disappointed. I may have to visit the lovely Clarice Starling and show her what a true Lecter is capable of – I'll even take photos of her broken and twisted body, and send them to you. That is, if you beat the needle. Surely, even with the depths you have fallen to, you are capable of getting off on an insanity plea yet again? That might not work this time, but I have faith in you, Father, as you never had faith in Mother and me.

Tell me, Father, why did you choose her? She is pretty, but not as beautiful as some – certainly not as lovely as Mother, though perhaps I am prejudiced. Did she fascinate you? She does not me. She wears cheap shoes, cheap perfume, bland clothing, now she is free of you. Her career has risen to the sky with the capture of Hannibal Lecter, they no longer care she bedded you like a common whore. Does it hurt you, to hear the woman you love described in such a fashion, Father? It should not, for she has put you behind her.

Tell me, Father, can you so easily put her behind you? Or do you still see her in your dreams, as you once saw Aunt Mischa? Yes, I know about Aunt Mischa. I have done my research into the man behind the monster well. I have been researching you ever since the schoolyard bullies broke my nose because of whom my father was. I had no notion, you see. I thought my father a bastard who left my mother, not a murderer and cannibal. But I cannot condemn you for those urges. You see, Father, I have them myself.

I cannot blame the death and cannibalisation of a younger sibling as the reason for my appetites, Father, but I can easily blame you for these flawed genes. I blame you for much more than that, but that is what I hate, blame, despise you for the most. There is no word in any language to describe how I feel for you. Not love, Father, love I lost when I killed my first. Is that what went wrong for you, Father, you killed, and it leeched the humanity from you? Is that why you loved the Starling girl? Did she make you feel alive again, after so long? She intrigued you, Father. She cut through the lies that you were free and happy, with your wines and your art and your view. You couldn't stop yourself from contacting her, could you? You can't protect her now. To touch the devil is to die, Father, to die from bliss, but I guarantee you her death will not be blissful because you are the closest thing to the devil I have ever encountered, Father, but not he.

Well, Father, I'd love to write more, but I have places to go, people to meet, things to do. Not least of those is meeting your pretty cheap wife. Do not worry (if you are still capable of the emotion), Father, her pretty neck is safe. For now. I might take it into my head that killing her will better the world, and do so. After all, Benjamin Raspail had a mother who loved him, and a sister, but you killed him. Just because he was a terrible flautist. Personally I agree with you – I cannot abide a good orchestra with one bad player, just like you – but that is not the topic under consideration. But your wife – well, who knows? I know you still love her, Father, and to me that seems a perfectly good excuse to kill her.

Don't bother having your federal friends chase me – your name isn't even on my birth certificate, and they cannot trace me through Mother: you have had too many lovers for that. Come to think of it, this letter will probably be viewed as yet another of your plots to escape if you ever show it to anyone. Incidentally, Father, your last plot was beautiful – I admire your brilliance, since it matches my own. I shall not sign this with my true last name, and as Mother died many years ago, she cannot help the FBI, or you for that matter, now. You broke her heart, you know. And you broke mine. It seems everything you touch you destroy, Father. Your parents, Aunt Mischa, the list goes on. I think, Father dear, the question is: shall I add Agent Starling to that list for you?

Ta ta,

Maire Lecter

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Thank you for taking the time to read my humble work of fiction. Please review on your way out.

By the way, Maire is Gaelic for 'sea of bitterness'. I thought it appropriate.


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